The present study seeks to identify the potentials of the development of ecotourism in the view of condition of local community. Urmia Lake is one the largest lakes in Iran which plays an important role in the socio-economic and environmental sectors in this region. However, due to the fact that the lake has shrunk substantially, it brought about national and international concerns.

The study with focus on qualitative methods employed semi-structured interviews in persons and groups and some observations. The study population consisted of all stakeholders concerning the revival of the lake and the potentials of the development of ecotourism in the area. Purposive sampling with snowballing method was used to find the informants. The techniques of SWOT, IEA, and QSPM were employed for strategic evaluations. Based on the results of external and internal factors, it was found that the most appropriate strategy for the development of ecotourism in the basin would be adaptive strategy. Among the identified strategies, the strategy of the formation of integrated management with the function of inter-province for the restoration of Urmia Lake was suggested as the most appropriate strategy for sustainable development of the ecotourism in basin.

The research instrument is questionnaire. This questionnaire is composed of 36 indicators in three categories of variables economy, culture and environment. To ensure validity, the questionnaire was placed at the disposal of experts to evaluate the reliability of the results was 903. Cronbach's alpha coefficient equal Data analysis have done by using SPSS and AMOS software. Single sample T-test has been used for examining the research hypotheses and Freedman test has been applied for ranking the effects of development of ecotourism. The results showed that between the economic, cultural, environmental, the most important dimension is economic, cultural and environment are in their next orders. According to the results of T-test, average number of respondents to the effect of tours on economic variable is significantly higher than the average number of this component. Hence, the hypothesis is confirmed and it can be inferred that ecotourism tours have affected economic of Damavand. In investigation of the effect of   social and cultural variables, the results of the test demonstrate effectiveness of ecotourism tours on the studied region and finally the results about environmental effects has confirmed this effectiveness.